Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Read.Eat.Listen: Orderliness

There's nothing exactly sexy about doing ones taxes, but once I got over the 'ughs' of it all, I got really into doing them this week. In any event, getting all my accounting up to date spawned a rash of (relative) orderliness. The words and music filtering into the reclaimed structure:

Read: Between the Malaysian flight disappearance acting as my whodunit mystery and Russia's political/war drama, I admit I've been a newshound. But as I'm about to do a writing workshop with the fantabulous Santa Cruz-based Ellen Bass, some poetry has crept in to save me. "Like a Beggar" is her latest.

excerpt of "Waiting for Rain" from Like a Beggar:"Maybe it's wrong/to think of better and worse./There's no one who can carry my fear/for a child who walks out the door/not knowing what will stop her breathe./The rain they say is coming/sails now over the Pacific in purplish nimbus clouds./But it isn't enough. Last year I watched/elephants encircle their young, shuffling/their massive legs without hurry, flaring/their great dusty ears. Once they drank from the snowmelt of Kilimanjaro. ..." — Ellen Bass

Eat: Though I grew up near fields full of them, I was first turned onto Brussels Sprouts as something I'd want to eat in a French train station during a cold winter trip abroad. Served as a side to something I can't remember, and helped along by a generous amount of butter, I came awake to their flavors. The cruciferous vegetable has since morphed into one of my favorite things to eat, and has nearly surpassed brocoli as the in-house go-to vegetable. Check out this simple Kale and Brussels Sprout Salad from Epicurious. Listen: Eliza Gilkyson is a more-than-fine songstress out of Texas whose steadily amassed a stellar body of work. She released a new album this week, her 20th or so (!), "Nocturne Sessions." Here's a tune from the CD :